If you missed Obama's press conference yesterday at 3PM.....transcript is here. I'll have more to say about the press conference next week.

But because President Obama spent a lot of time at the presser justifying and defending the Surveillance State's communications hoovering programs....insisting safeguards and blah-blah-blah are in place with checks and blah-blah.....also congressional oversight blah-blah.......I thought I'd share this story with you to disperse the cloud of smoke Obama left surrounding the Total-Recall-style Surveillance State practices as of 2013.

Lavabit, an email service that boasted of its security features and claimed 350,000 customers, is no more, apparently after rejecting a court order for cooperation with the US government to participate in surveillance on its customers. It is the first such company known to have shuttered rather than comply with government surveillance.

"I am unaware of any situation in which a service provider chose to shut down rather than comply with a court order they felt violated the constitution," said Kurt Opsahl, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Silent Circle, another provider of secure online services, announced later Thursday night that it would scrap its own encrypted email offering, Silent Mail.

"Reading between the lines," Wired's Kevin Poulsen writes, "it’s reasonable to assume (Lavabit owner) Levison has been fighting either a National Security Letter seeking customer information — which comes by default with a gag order — or a full-blown search or eavesdropping warrant."

Yes, the email security company Lavabit had as one of it's customers, Edward Snowden, someone who President Obama does not think is a patriot. And yes, in free America, the Surveillance State overlords are trying to do all they can to silence Edward Snowden, the guy who outed the programs and practices of our Surveillance State, deeply embarrassing U.S. leaders who have worked tirelessly for a decade to keep Surveillance State programs a secret.

Because Lavabit owner Ladar Levison is under a gag order instituted by our freedom loving overlords....and can't talk about his story without fear of reprisal from those who tell us they only work tirelessly to protect us.....The Reverend will speculate. Because that's what secrecy and gag orders and whatnot create....speculation, conspiracy theories, etc. Yet, we're often told how ours is an open, transparent society.

The feds et.al. want Snowden badly. After all, Obama ordered the Bolivian president's plane grounded, an unprecedented move, because he thought Snowden might be on board. Yeah, Obama had dismissively labeled Snowden as some unimportant "hacker" early on but the truth is, Obama wants Snowden silenced in the worst way. He wants him silenced because Snowden is embarrassing the heck out of them by releasing Surveillance State program details......most of which our Leaders have lied about in the past.

If Lavabit was approached by authorities and ordered to allow government spooks to tap into the company's "backdoor".....ostensibly granting federal snoops the ability to spy on 350,000 e-mail customers......authorities that Google, Facebook, Twitter and many other companies have already granted our Spymasters.....then, just as Google and the rest have done.....Lavabit's owner would have had to agree to remain silent about the "backdoor" snooping, risking a long imprisonment if he told anyone about any of it.

I've been following the construction and implementation of our nation's communications dragnet since 2001. All of it has been constructed in total secrecy. When questioned, those few in leadership who knew about these wildly-illegal programs, like Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) for example, were also under a gag order.....himself risking arrest and incarceration if he told anyone about any of it.

A cowboy impersonator who was chosen to be the U.S. president by one black robed Supreme Court Justice 13 years ago......once comically quipped that "the terrorists" hated the U.S. and wanted to do us harm because of our....."freedoms."

Apparently, our in-the-know Leaders of 2013 have decided to remove....secretly of course.....some of those offensive "freedoms."

Big Brother is on the job....and he's watching and recording everything.

Many Americans have been very upset, sometimes bordering on hysteria, over perceived Obama wrongdoings these last 5 years......most of it small ball nonsense lacking substance and/or context.

I'm here to tell those folks today.....this stuff about the Bush/Obama Surveillance State is the real deal. The Eisenhower "prophecy" of 1959...his warning of the great dangers lurking within a growing "military industrial complex".....has now come true.

Ours is no longer a law-based democratic republic with significant checks and balances to guarantee the freedom of American citizens. Instead, America, not unlike today's Egypt.....is a Military Surveillance State.....where our Protectors make all the decisions, and do so in private.